Investigative Post

 Most students attending Buffalo public schools had fallen behind academically before the pandemic struck. Only a quarter of elementary and middle school students received proficient scores on their state standardized tests for reading, writing and math.  The learning gap got worse when instruction went remote in March 2020 and continued through most of last […]

Think the $950 million the state doled out to build and equip a factory for Tesla in South Buffalo was a lot of money? State and local officials offered Samsung twice as much to build a semiconductor plant in rural Genesee County. The $1.9 billion subsidy package would have been the second-largest deal in state […]

A new stadium for the Buffalo Bills would boost the Western New York economy as much as a new Target store. Which is to say, very little. While some supporting construction of a new stadium maintain it would be an economic boon, research by economists across the political spectrum has found stadiums generate limited new […]

In Buffalo, crime — and the police response to it — is a tale of two cities. Let’s say you witness an assault in progress on the city’s East Side and call 911. That’s a high-priority call: The threat of harm is immediate and there is — or was, at the time of the call […]

Investigative Post filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court today seeking the release of two studies that are central to negotiations involving a proposed new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. Both studies were commissioned by Pegula Sports and Entertainment, which is affiliated with the Bills, and shared with Empire State Development, the state’s primary economic […]

This story was written by Jim Heaney based on interviews by Investigative Post reporters with 120 City of Buffalo voters. The interviews were conducted at 19 polling places, located in all nine Common Council districts. Three-quarters of the interviews took place on election day, the balance during early voting last week. Participating staff included Layne […]

Statistically speaking, Buffalo is safer today than it was when Mayor Byron Brown took office in 2006. But it doesn’t feel that way to Gayla Ross.  Ross lost her only son, Amir Jemes, in 2018. Jemes, 19, an aspiring musician, was shot and killed while being robbed on Littlefield Avenue on the city’s East Side. […]

You might imagine Buffalo police spend their shifts busting drug dealers, foiling burglaries and taking guns off the street. There’s some of that, certainly.  But an analysis by Investigative Post of five years of 911 calls shows that sort of policing accounts for only a sliver of what cops do. More than anything else, they […]